In my 33 years, I've been asked to clean my dinner plate, to clean my garage, and to clean up my act. Never have I been asked to clean a dinosaur. That is, until Fritz Gottron hands me the tool.

We're in the second-floor prep room at the Morrison Natural History Museum, and a football-size chunk of fossilized stegosaur encased in sandstone sits on the table in front of me. Gottron, a retired coal executive and museum volunteer, activates the pen-size mini-jackhammer, and the room fills with a dentist-office whir. When he passes the device to me, I balk.

"Are you sure I should be doing this?"

"It's idiot-proof," Gottron assures me.

"Well, then, you don't know me."

Ordinarily I'd rip into this 146-million-year-old bad boy like a third-grader, but this is no ordinary stegosaur. You see, 133 years ago, this fossil was taken from a dig site along the Dakota Hogback just outside town. It's from a pretty important stegosaur—the first-ever found in the world. As in, it's a really big deal. As in, I'm kind of freaking out.

I push the tool's power button and it hums with the portent of small-scale destruction. I let out a deep breath and look toward Gottron.